


Dempsey Roll

by en passant (corinthian)



Series: Knuckle Up [1]
Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 16:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10701102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: — a boxing technique developed by boxer Jack Dempsey, a style of bob and weave.We all have to grow up, somehow.





	Dempsey Roll

He doesn’t remember much of his childhood — just jagged fragments set against white noise. His mother’s hands steadying his shoulders, his father slapping him on the back — congratulations for something. School. A sport activity. For just being ‘a good kid.’ Something like that, anyway.

The landscape of his childhood disturbed him, in a distant way. Every morning asked him, why is he awake? Why is he going through the motions? What was the point of his parents’ smiles, breakfast on the table, the monotonous thrum of the schoolroom. 

Mostly, he remembers his sister. A day when she walked him to school and he got distracted by ants on a dragonfly. How they worked together to dissect the carcass, carrying pieces of it away through the cracks in stone to a hidden home. She just took his hand, laced their fingers together, waited with him and only urged him on when they were in danger of being late. The time she showed him the secret passage in the wooded area behind their house and sat with him when he fell asleep — cheerfully telling him later that he talked in his sleep, about grand adventures and heroics that he pulled off on them. _Since you’re strong, Ayer, I could almost believe it!_

In the end, he had probably decided, she was probably the only thing worth remembering.

* * *

The first time he feels alive is behind the school, right before the sun set. He had simply forgotten to go home, spent the late afternoon napping in the long grass — his parents would assume study group, or something. He was a good kid, after all, it was just so easy to do well. On his way back to the main road, sunlight crisscrossing across the grass and dirt path a sound caught his ears.

The dull thud of something against stone — like a deflated basketball, leaving behind a wet smack with every hit. He wanted to see what it was, but his feet stayed rooted where he stood. He couldn’t move forward. But just the sound made his heart race — the kind of anticipation where something deep inside of him knew what was around the corner but his brain couldn’t catch up.

“Hey,” and then there was someone else there. Someone he hadn’t seen before. Taller than him, older than him, expression set at a cocky angle. He held out a hand. “Let’s see what all the ruckus is, hm?”

Ayer thought about his sister’s hand — she was older than him as well, but her hands were like his, small and delicate looking. She always had callouses from something or other — from hauling heavy things for their parents, tooling around in their father’s workshop or just “helping out” as she called it. This guy had entirely different hands. They were rough all over. His knuckles looked weird, settled unevenly against the top of his hand. There was a large groove across his palm, like an old scar from a knife or something.

“You just gonna stand there, Ayer? We’ll miss the fun.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” — even though he hadn’t told the guy his name, he went along with him anyway. They walked down the path together — the guy just kept talking. Half of it filtered through his ears and the other half rattled around.

_Fighting on school property, now isn’t that just being a bad role model. Kids shouldn’t get exposed to too much violence. Influences their little minds, yanno?_

Around the corner it was just as the guy said. Two men fighting — they were far too old to be students — and one of them was very clearly winning. He held his opponent by the hair and was slamming the back of his head into the flat rocks beneath. The thudding is what Ayer had heard, the wetness from the blood and probably broken bone.

“He’s going to die.” 

“Ha? Maybe. Wanna lend them a hand?”

He hesitated. He didn’t really want to help. His new companion laughed, threw back his head and laughed long and full.

“Got it, got it. So, wanna beat the shit out of that guy?”

Yeah, he did. He didn’t really know how, but he felt it in his bones. He stepped forward once, then again and then he was running at the two men. He didn’t yell or announce himself, just dashed in between the two and slammed his fist up into the first jawline that came into his view.

It hurt his hand. It felt like he was hitting something immovable, too solid to be real, everything around him was thrown into sharp focus. For a moment he swore he could see everything — the man’s face, his bones, his blood, the individual pieces of dirt beneath his feet, the seams on clothes, he could see all the way to his house, at least a thirty minute walk from where he was and around several twisting footpaths. It was the best thing he’d ever felt in his life — even the return blow from the man he hit, an elbow crashing into the top of his head, stunning him momentarily.

“Don’t just take that.”

Yeah. He agreed with that, swung again. Kicked. He threw his weight against the closest body. He dragged the man down to the ground dropped his elbow against the man’s cheekbone. His entire arm ached, he could feel the bruises work their way up from his abused muscle to the surface of his skin.

It was euphoric. He kept swinging his fists, he might have even laughed. Everything blurred together, a kaleidoscope of bright colors.

In the end, he didn’t really remember what happened. He woke up the next morning with permission from his mother to stay home from school — since he had been so sick last night. She was vey sorry to hear that he got the fever and vomiting that had been going around the school. The clothes he had been wearing the other night were nowhere to be seen and when Ayer went downstairs — to a most certainly empty house — for breakfast he found his new friend from the other night.

“What are you doing here?” He asked, but also simply moved around the table to the sink to drink water, spit it down the drain.

“I didn’t get to talk to you too much last night, you really did a number on yourself, your folks think you passed out in the bathroom. The floor gives wicked black eyes, I hear.”

“Who’re you?”

“Me? Hmm, guess you should call me ‘Bowman’, sounds like a great name, doesn’t it?”

Something put him at ease, Ayer shrugged. “Sure, whatever.”

* * *

The letter he left his family was short. He didn’t want to say too much — he didn’t want his sister to worry and he didn’t want her to think less of him. He couldn’t recall if she had ever been disappointed in him, he can only remember a time when she’d been scared for him because he had climbed the old (dying, rotting from the trunk out) tree to the very top and sat there until she had gone to find him. 

it explained everything and that was the important part.

Bowman waited until he’d finished writing it, tapping his finger impatiently against the wood of the windowframe. They had both agreed to take the drainpipe down the back, cut through the city and head off to somewhere far away. Ayer didn’t want to run into his family. He didn’t want to see them when he had bigger things to do with his life.

_You could be so much more._ Bowman liked to say.

_I’m just myself_ , Ayer would always reply. Or at least, for a while.

* * *

The first big bet was more money than he’d ever seen in his life. It wasn’t like his family was poor, but it also wasn’t as though they piled up coins on coins and jewelry and anything of value onto the table and let it sit there.

He didn’t really care either. But money was needed to travel, to get places to sleep, to show off just where he stood in the world. Money, power, fame, a result of how good he as at fighting, or whatever.

Compared to being in the ring, it didn’t mean anything. The bet against him also didn’t compare to the sneers on the crowd’s faces. Easy bet. Scrawny kid against the champion. He heard them too — saying he looked too much like a baby, a mommy’s boy, a rat crawled out of the sewer thinking he can take on a real man. He took it all in silence — it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. If they weren’t going to meet him with their fists, what did their words mean?

Life only began when he stepped into the ring. When his feet crossed the scuffed line that marked where the fight began and where the rest of civilization was. When he stepped over that border, he could breathe.

The fight was too quick. The opponent too cocky — and he had been too eager. He pulled the man’s head down by the ear, the rules of engagement in these fights were loose and fast at best, and drove his first two knuckles into the bridge of his nose. It was better than a handshake by far, one of the best ways to get to know people. The language of brutality was simple to understand. A man who simply took the hit was confident, perhaps too confident. A man who reeled back immediately was afraid and unsteady. He learned, eventually, it was the men who went sideways, didn’t back off and didn’t misjudge him that were the most fun.

After the broken nose, Ayer let his hand roll to the eye socket, raised his elbow and drove all of his body weight and momentum behind it. Eyes are softer than any other part of the face. His knuckles found their way into the orbital cavity. Blood and humor slicked his hand, and they both dropped to the ground. But his opponent’s head cracked against the hard floor and Ayer landed on the prone body.

“Who else wants some? C’mon!” So he was there, blood splattered across his hand and wrist, not even standing, and there was a hush on the crowd. All of the vitality left him then, in the quiet. There was no other challenge, no other reason to be there and no other reason to be alive. Bowman hauled him to his feet and punched his shoulder, laughing. _There we go! Look at that, Ayer! You really showed ‘em._

* * *

“I’m in your corner, always.” Bowman said.

“Won’t be too difficult, let’s take over the world.” Bowman said.

“Clinging to something like the past isn’t for people like us. There’s only everything in the future — glory, power, all of that good stuff. All of the fights and all of the opponents you could ever imagine.”

* * *

“Do you miss your family?” Bowman asks.

“Huh?” Ayer responds, as if he didn’t quite clearly hear the question. It’s before another match, it seems odd to bring it up. Bowman gives him a two fingered salute.

“Don’t want you distracted.”

“So why bring it up?”

Bowman rubs his back, a warm up encouragement, his thumbs dig in under his shoulder blades. Ayer knows that the pressure is there, but he barely feels it. Something in the back of his mind alerts him that something is wrong, but he doesn’t know what. He’s on edge, for no reason.

“You haven’t mentioned them in a long time, isn’t our anniversary of striking off to do our own thing, find ourselves and carve out a place in the world coming up?”

He doesn’t know. It’s been years, but he didn’t keep track of it. He probably grew up in some way. He’s taller than he was before, but still not that tall. His hands have well worn callouses now. His nose is a little crooked, his last two fingers on his left hand don’t sit even with the rest of his knuckles. There’s a long cut that crosses his abdomen, numerous scraps and puncture wounds from fights he’s had. 

He would consider himself an adult, now. He doesn’t remember a lot of his childhood.

“It’s not like they’ll follow me. I left them a letter.” Ayer replies. He thinks about the letter being lost, briefly, torn pieces of paper floating out the window to a muddy street below, but that could never have happened. He knows he wrote it and left it on his bed.

“Your confidence is one of the best things about you, Ayer.”

“Got you to thank for some of this,” Ayer grudgingly admits. Bowman laughs, but the sound doesn’t reach his ears. Everything is muffled, for some reason. He feels like he’s alone even though Bowman is right there in front of him. Ayer knows Bowman almost as well as he knows himself. “But don’t just give me useless compliments. I earned them.”

“Right, right, king and champion, for now.”

“Ha? What’s this for now? Unless you wanna try and unseat me right now, and I’ll take you on.” Ayer snaps back. Bowman puts his hand over Ayer’s eyes, like blinkering a horse. And in that moment it’s just the two of them in the world. (For a moment, Ayer feels truly alone in this place he created for himself). “Bowman!?”

“When we stand on the top, this is what it’ll be like, yeah? Does it feel like you’re going to die? When everyone else is laid out before you, beaten and broken.”

His heart beats faster. Is this what it’s like to be truly alive? (Is he afraid?)

“Yeah.”

“So don’t look away, let’s go forward and grasp that future too. You’re up soon kiddo.” And the rest of the world floods back into his field of vision. The alien world that he doesn’t belong to, too bright and too frivolous. The one that makes him feel suffocated.

_Our world is waiting for us._

He just had to break through to it. (That’s what he wants, isn’t it?)


End file.
